Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 120-112 loss to the Phoenix Suns from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. No defensive players without Walker Kessler
It was hard to expect anything else to happen tonight.
After the Jazz announced that Walker Kessler would miss the game due to right hip soreness, the outcome of this game became pretty clear: the Suns' offense would likely have their way with the Jazz’s defense, and it would be hard to keep pace with them on the other end.
Yep, that happened. The Suns put up a 127 offensive rating on the Jazz‘s defense. Some of that, to be sure, was the Suns‘ hot shooting (they made 46.2% from three tonight), but those threes seemed in their wheelhouse — it’s a team built around shooting the ball.
But in tonight’s rotation, who on the Jazz would you expect to give the Suns defensive trouble? Not a single guy in this Jazz group that played tonight has ever put up a season in which they had an above-median number of steals, per DunksAndThrees.com. Only two have put up a season with above-median blocks: Drew Eubanks and John Collins, neither of who I’d term defensive menaces.
Steals and blocks, of course, aren‘t the only measure of defensive prowess. Much of the time (most of the time? It would be interesting to see), those are off-ball help defensive actions. But as on-ball defenders, I don‘t think any of them are pluses either: Cody Williams is a rookie, Lauri Markkanen and Collins can and do get blown by on the perimeter, Collin Sexton‘s a bulldog but too small, Keyonte George is lackadaisical most of the time on defense. Jordan Clarkson is Jordan Clarkson. Kyle Filipowski, Johnny Juzang, Isaiah Collier, and Brice Sensabaugh are extremely young and not plus athletes.
It‘s a roster flaw, in other words. Now, we know that the Jazz aren‘t trying to win, so it’s not a problem right now. But at some point, the Jazz are going to have to either develop some of these youngsters into plus defensive players, or add some other players who fit that criteria.
2. Isaiah Collier, an injection of pace
Man, the Jazz’s offense is slow right now. According to Inpredictable.com, they‘re taking an average of 16.2 seconds after a made basket to get a shot up, which is the fourth slowest in the NBA. In the Keyonte George as point guard era, it feels like they spend just so much time getting the ball up the court, pointing out where everyone should be in spacing, and their starting their action with only 12 seconds left on the shot clock. Let’s get it moving!
Isaiah Collier has been that injection of pace, at least in his first two rotational games. With him on the floor, it seems like the Jazz are more quick and decisive in their offensive actions. That’s even as Collier was “defended” (read: not defended) by centers in the San Antonio game, which naturally will muck things up elsewhere.
Both of Collier’s baskets tonight were pointed, quick forays to the rim. The last one even beat the third-quarter buzzer with pretty impressive speed.
Just as important, I don‘t feel like he’s forcing the issue on his drives right now, either. Those were his only two field goal attempts in his 15 minutes on the floor; all of his misses against San Antonio were from deep.
It‘s not that I think Collier is a starting-caliber point guard right now. But his overall approach to the floor game in his minutes on the court is pretty impressive for a rookie with just those two NBA games with real minutes under his belt.
3. The importance of the NBA Cup
I‘m hopeful that the NBA Cup will actually matter one day. I’m not particularly optimistic about it.
Players pretend to take it seriously in interviews — but then laugh about it privately. In their defense, the same is true with coaches, who aren‘t exactly choosing their lineups with playoff-like seriousness. I mean, let‘s be honest: Walker Kessler would likely be out on the floor with the Jazz tonight if this were the real playoffs, but because it’s just an NBA Cup game, he sat with hip soreness. Lauri Markkanen would have played 40 minutes, not 31 minutes. And so on.
It‘s a bummer, because in a world where this tournament did matter, it would have been fun for Jazz fans especially. We all know they‘re not making the real NBA playoffs this season. But any team can beat any other team on any given particular night — the Hawks beat the Celtics tonight! — and make a Cup run. This should be the most fun stretch of the Jazz‘s whole year. Instead... it’s more malaise.
But I‘m a little bit skeptical about the NBA’s ability to make things matter to their players and organizations right now. Exactly how many gimmicks and quirks has the league tried to get its players to care about the All-Star Game? They tried playground-style picking teams in order to start intrigue... the players didn‘t care. They tried the Elam ending, the players didn‘t care. They tried getting Larry Bird and Dr. Julius Irving to talk to them pre-game, begging them to play hard. The players didn’t care.
They tried bringing out dozens of food-insecure kids representing the Cleveland-area food bank, giving them an obvious and loud section of lower-bowl tickets, and saying “if you play hard, these kids in particular will get $100K per quarter so they get to eat.” And the players didn’t care.
I don‘t know what you do to solve that level of disassociation. Give the winner a playoff spot, maybe, since that‘s all the teams and players seem to care about? I truly don’t know if even that would work.
Ah well. Right now, these games feel no more important than a regular season NBA game — which, for the Jazz this year, is about as unimportant as it gets.
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